AHO Logo

Designing for Brand Experience – Introduction

Customer experiences have for a time now been recognized as the new arena for building competitive advantage, and the role of design in enabling these experiences has been acknowledged. Yet, one topic seems to be elusive in the current discussion about customer experience: What is the experience that the organization wants its customers to have? As it is further explained in the theoretical section of this text, it is proposed that this experience should be a direct expression of the brand, one in which the customer’s, employee’s and organization’s perspective combine to play a role in defining the Brand Experience Proposition.

Another topic that also deserves exploration is the process of translating Brand Experience Propositions into Customer’s Experience. Although design professionals have for more than a decade been embedding brand characteristics in the service interactions, brand manuals have not yet adapted to the design of brand experiences; in that context, service designers have to decode the brand proposition through informal means (e.g. nonspecific brand manuals, current touch-points, interviews), ensuing different interpretations of the Brand Experience Proposition, and consequently, resulting in the development of dissimilar brand manifestations. It is time for brands to go beyond the traditional corporate manual content and support the design for service experiences.

This text, which is based on my PhD Research, suggests that the experience the organization is trying to deliver to the customers is actually the brand promise, and as such, it should be articulated as a Brand Experience Proposition. Further, the process of translating the Brand Strategy into Customer Experiences is explored through the ‘Designing for Brand Experience’ approach. In an effort to make the rather extensive content easier to read, the text is divided into two sections:

1 – The ‘Brandslation and Brand Experience Manual section is more practitioner focused; it presents the proposed experimental framework – which is grounded in the theoretical section and was developed through a research by design process – and which can help organizations define and communicate their Brand Experience Proposition through the Brand Experience Manual, enabling the design of Brand based Service Interactions.

2 – The ‘Theoretical Background section is quite academic in the writing; it explores the foundations for the concept of Brand Experience Proposition as the experience the organization should design for, and proposes the process of Designing for Brand Experiences as a way to enable Service Branding; the translation of the Brand Strategy into Customers Experiences.

Click here to download the full text 

 

Notes:

Brandslation is a registered trademark of the Oslo School of Architecture and Design

For more on the topic, go to http://designresearch.no/people/mauricy-filho

Special thanks to Simon Clatworthy, Johan Blomkvist and Paulo Peres for the help reviewing the text

Leave a Reply